If anything, he looked calmer than she felt.
He nodded his head. ‘Don’t worry. I’m not a complete novice.’
He’d obviously guessed the reason for her question or knew what she was thinking. It would make her job easier if he had a vague idea of what he was in for. ‘This isn’t your first retrieval?’ she queried.
‘I’ve done a couple of transfers before but no primaries and no S&R.’
The most common retrieval for the QMERT team was an inter-hospital transfer or IHT, which was what they were heading to now. Often, but not always, this was a fairly straightforward exercise and Georgie hoped that would be the case today.
Josh’s prior experience of IHTs was a bonus and she was comforted knowing that his confident walk wasn’t just window dressing, but, still, it was probably a good thing that their first callout wasn’t for a search and rescue.
They were almost at the chopper now and she could see Pat in the pilot’s seat, doing his pre-flight checks. Isaac, the air crew officer on duty, was stowing equipment. He closed the final hatch as they approached so it looked as though they were just about ready for take-off. She might just have time to introduce Josh to the rest of the crew but they’d have to check their equipment and run through their procedures in flight. She would have liked a little time to establish some rapport first before they were sent out on a job but, as often happened, the calls dictated their day and they’d just have to get on with it. She prayed it would go smoothly.
‘Have you met Pat and Isaac?’ she asked.
‘Yep, first thing this morning,’ he said as he raised a hand in greeting and Isaac nodded an acknowledgement.
‘G’day, Georgie, Doc,’ Pat greeted them, pointing backwards over his shoulder with his thumb, indicating they should board the chopper.
Georgie let Josh climb in first and she dragged the door shut behind them both, securing it with a flick of the lock. There were four forward-facing seats across the width of the chopper and another two rear-facing seats behind each of the flight deck seats. Josh had taken the third seat across. She could sit beside the door but she preferred one of the middle seats so she slipped into the seat beside him.
‘Baptism by fire,’ she commented as Josh strapped himself in.
She was relieved to see he was able to shrug into his harness, adjust the straps and snap it closed without difficulty. He seemed comfortable enough in the close confines of the chopper and she knew he’d flown before. Yesterday, in fact. She also knew he would have undergone the escape training course. All the rescue crews had to pass HUET—Helicopter Underwater Escape Training—because a lot of their flying could be over water. So transport wasn’t a problem, but what she didn’t know was how much medical experience he’d had outside a hospital situation. A few inter-hospital transfers wasn’t much.
Pat had started the engine and the rotor blades were spinning. The noise made it impossible to continue a conversation until everyone was wearing headsets. She and Josh both grabbed sets and flicked the comms switch on so they could talk to each other and the air crew.
The chopper was lifting off its trolley. It tilted as it left the ground and the movement threw Georgie against Josh. There wasn’t a lot of room to move and she could feel his thigh, firm and muscular, where it rested against hers. His body heat radiated through the fabric of their jumpsuits and into her thigh. She’d never experienced such a visceral reaction to someone before. It was as though her body recognised him despite the fact they were strangers. On some level she knew him. She could feel her knees trembling but she couldn’t break the contact. There was nowhere to go.
There wasn’t much room to move in the back of the chopper. She often felt as though she only just fitted in between all the medical gear and Josh was several inches taller than she was. He was really jammed in. She was five feet six inches. He’d be six feet at least. The stretcher was locked in place in front of them. It ran the width of the helicopter, from one door to the other, between their seats and those opposite. Josh’s knees were crammed between the seat and the stretcher and now he had her practically lying on top of him as well. There was no escape for him, he was well and truly stuck.
‘Sorry,’ she said through the headset as Pat straightened the chopper and she was able to shift back into an upright position and away from Josh’s firm thigh. Perhaps she should have taken a different seat. Squeezed up against him in the back of the chopper, she was a bit too aware of him.
‘No worries.’ He looked at her and grinned, apparently completely unfazed by the lack of room. Her stomach did a lazy somersault in response to his smile and the look of mischief in his grey eyes made her blush. Her body was overheating, from her thighs to her cheeks. She was stifling and she wondered if she could ask Isaac to turn the air-sconditioning up higher but everyone else looked comfortable enough. She’d just have to put up with feeling as though her cheeks were on fire.
‘How did things go with Nigel yesterday?’ Josh’s voice was cool and relaxed, in sharp contrast to her flustered state. If he’d been surprised to find himself working with her he hadn’t shown it, and if their close proximity in the back of the chopper rattled him he wasn’t showing any outward signs of that either. Looking at him, one imagined that things were going exactly according to plan. ‘Did he get back safely?’
She decided she needed to chill out. She nodded. ‘No further dramas,’ she said as she filled him in on the outcome of the English tourist’s medical emergency from the previous day. ‘He was admitted to the Cairns hospital overnight but when I checked on him this morning he’d had an uneventful night and they were expecting to discharge him.’
‘The hospital doesn’t mind you following up?’
Georgie shook her head. ‘As you said, it’s a small world.’ She shrugged. ‘Cairns isn’t a big town, everyone seems to know everyone else and that’s especially true in the medical field. I think the hospital staff expect us to ring. Most of the QMERT doctors work in the hospital too, and we all like to know what happened to our charges. Will you be doing any shifts at the hospital while you’re here?’
He nodded. ‘I’ll do one or two a week but I’m in Cairns to get as much experience as I can with retrievals, particularly primaries. I imagine it’s vastly different from working in a first-class A and E department.’
Georgie finally relaxed. This was her area of expertise and discussing this topic kept her mind focussed. ‘You’ll find you’ll have to strip your medicine back to basics. The principles and the goals are the same, you just won’t have the same state-of-the-art equipment at your fingertips or the specialist services you’re probably used to. We become everyone from anaesthetist to scout nurse out here.’
‘Luckily I like a challenge,’ he said. ‘So what should we expect when we get to Tully?’
For the remainder of the flight they ran through possible scenarios that might greet them on landing, including the possibility that they might need to intubate the baby. Together they checked the medical kits to make sure they had everything they might need. Small regional hospitals would have standard supplies but they might not always have the less commonly required equipment.
Josh was methodical in his checking but that wasn’t surprising. It was a character trait attributable to most of the team—organised, meticulous and logical would describe almost all of them—and by the time they circled over the landing site in Tully Georgie was feeling confident that they would be able to work together comfortably.
She watched out of the window as Pat landed the chopper on the cricket oval. Tully had the highest annual rainfall in Queensland and light drizzle was falling as they climbed out of the helicopter and into the ambulance that was waiting to transport them to the hospital. Within minutes of landing they were walking into the tiny hospital.
The local doctor, who looked like he must only be just out of medical school, gave them a rundown on the patient’s condition as they followed him to her bedside. ‘Carrie is four months old but she was born eight weeks prem so her adjusted age